“Surviving the Anthropocene will demand reflection upon – and transformation of – the practices inherited from the modern in order to overcome modernity itself.”

Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics

Cosmophotographies, the 2026 Photoworks Annual, takes Yuk Hui’s conception of cosmotechnics, and applies it to photography. Hui argues that technology is never neutral, embodying the values, assumptions and ways of knowing which shaped it – while simultaneously shaping them. Cosmophotographies asks what ideology is embedded in the camera and the images it produces, and whether we use this technology differently. Hui argues that the cosmotechnics which currently dominates emerged with European modernity, and has helped globalise a disastrous relationship with the world. In the face of impending environmental and climate breakdown, Cosmophotographies wonders, can we urgently envisage something else?

The Annual explores these questions with a global cohort of artists, writers and thinkers, who are already putting theory into practice – and vice versa. Feiyi Wen deconstructs the image and how we use it to see nature, adding a sensitivity to collaboration and chance. Ayobami Ogungbe cuts up photographs of his hometown in Badagry, Nigeria, once a major slave centre. Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo unpicks camera advertising, showing how a Western viewpoint has been universalised and sold to the world. Yining He contributes an original essay contrasting Western perspectives with traditional Chinese approaches; Beatrice Zaidenberg draws on linguist and activist Yásnaya Elena A. Gil of the Mixe people in Mexico to propose techno-diversities; Taous Dahmani and Omar Kholeif explore wider histories of the medium.

For the past 30 years, Photoworks has evolved into a platform for sustained critical inquiry around photography’s histories, politics and futures. Each edition extends an ongoing conversation, with Cosmophotographies continuing an enquiry started in 2023 with The Thing, and further explored in 2024 with Multi Multi. It is also in dialogue with Photoworks’ 2026 Festival, Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams, which considers how identity, place, memory, community and the environment are interconnected, asking what it means to live through uncertainty while imagining or creating hopeful futures. At a time when public discourse is increasingly accelerated and fragmented, publishing remains an act of care, a commitment to research, critical thinking and the long life of ideas, and a place where diverse positions intersect.

Cosmophotographies is edited by Diane Smyth and designed by Jane and Jeremy. Featuring interviews with each of the contributing artists, it is arranged in discrete sections with perforated pages allowing readers to rearrange.